Monday, October 17, 2011

Here are scenes of the reconstructed Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The actual gate was built about 575 BC at the request of King Nebuchadnezzar II, who dedicated it to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia link.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Five human footprints that may be as old as 25,000 years have been discovered in Chihuahua in northern Mexico. Specialists say they could belong to the first men who lived in this region.

The footprints correspond to three adults and a child that probably lived in the caves that are located in the sierra, in the Valle de Ahuatos, eight kilometers from the town of Creel, in Chihuahua, according to Art Daily.

According to morphoscopic analysis, Footprint 1, by its longitude of 26 centimeters, corresponds to the right foot of a male adult, while Footprint 2 belongs to the left foot of another adult, but the gender is difficult to determine. Footprint 3 was made by the right foot of an infant three or four years old.

Footprints 4 and 5 are from another adult and represent the only pair that corresponds to the same person. These footprints are significant as they have six toes, which may be due a malformation, researchers said.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Archaeologists digging in El Salvador have unexpectedly unearthed a white road buried 1,400 years ago under volcanic ash. Known as a “sacbe” ~ or “white road” ~ it is six feet wide and was built around 600 AD from ash originating with an even earlier volcanic eruption.

“Until our discovery, these roads were only known from the Yucatan area in Mexico and all were built with stone linings, which generally preserved well,” says University of Colorado professor Payson Sheets, who discovered the nearby Mayan village of Ceren.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

No Aztec ruler’s tomb has ever been found, but archaeologists are optimistic that the recent discovery of a ceremonial platform in Mexico City might lead them to such a tomb.

According to Latino Fox News:

Researchers have been on a five-year quest to find a royal tomb in the area of the Templo Mayor, a complex of two huge pyramids and numerous smaller structures that contained the ceremonial and spiritual heart of the pre-Hispanic Aztec empire.

"The historical records say that the rulers were cremated at the foot of the Templo Mayor, and it is believed to be on this same structure — the 'cuauhxicalco' — that the rulers were cremated," said archaeologist Raul Barrera.

"That is what the historical sources say," he said, referring to accounts written by Roman Catholic priests who accompanied the Spanish soldiers in the 1521 conquest. "Of course, now we have to find archaeological evidence to corroborate that."

The platform is about 15 yards in diameter and probably was built around A.D. 1469. It is still being unearthed and is covered with at least 19 serpent heads, each about a half-yard long.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Newly unearthed evidence points to the Stonehenge area in England being an important site for Stone Age people thousands of years before the famous monolithic stones were erected.

A team of student archaeologists has uncovered a huge cache of artifacts belonging to hunter-gatherers from the middle of the Stone Age, including the remains of a gargantuan Mesolithic-era feast, which took place close to Stonehenge.The site has also yielded what are believed to be the oldest carved figurines yet found in the UK, indicating a continuity of human presence in what seems to have been a sacred spot for thousands of years.

According to the Independent:

With the tools were animal remains, including what Jacques and his team thought was a cow’s tooth, which they sent away for radiocarbon dating. The result was an astonishingly early date of around 6250 BC, firmly in the Mesolithic period and more than 3,000 years before construction on Stonehenge began. Further excavations ensued and, by the end of September 2011, the team had uncovered a rare Mesolithic hoard of more than 5,500 worked flints and tools from just two small trenches 35m away from each other.

As well as the tools and tool production debris, large quantities of burnt flint were found, indicating a fire, and more than 200 cooked animal bones, which came not from a cow, but from at least one aurochs – a gigantic creature resembling a buffalo that is now extinct.

Archeologists are linking the recent finds to the mysterious Stonehenge “totem poles,” three colossal Mesolithic post holes found during the excavation of the Stonehenge car park some years ago ~ another clue that the area was important to people in the Mesolithic era.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

The governments of Mexico and Guatamala are cooperating with filmmakers who contend there is proof of contact between the Mayan civilization and extraterrestrials.

"Mexico will release codices, artifacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists," according to Raul Julia-Levy, producer of “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond,” due for release next year.

Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado, minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, said new evidence has emerged "of contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time." He said among the evidence is proof of landings pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old.

The Guatemalan government has joined the project as well, giving access to artifacts and newly discovered prophecies. While the Guatemalan government is not offering information about aliens, it has joined Mexico in supporting the project.

"Guatemala, like Mexico, is home to the ancient yet advanced Mayan civilization and has also kept certain provocative archeological discoveries classified, and now believes that it is time to bring forth this information in the new documentary," Guatemala's minister of tourism, Guillermo Novielli Quezada, said in a statement. He said the country was working with filmmakers "for the good of mankind."

Tides represent the high and low, the ebb and flow. They're the rhythm spanning millennia and an apt image for this blog as it seeks to provide accounts linking today with ages long past. New archaeological finds and scholarly speculations help us better understand our ancestors and this small planet we've shared. And the better we understand our forebears and their environs, the better we know ourselves.

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Ancient Tides is the top blog in the Ancient History category at Masters in History, a portal for online degrees in History.

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